This blog discusses: SEO (search Engine Optimisation), social media and the marketing power of combining your web site, your blog, your Twitter profile and your FaceBook page to function as a collective unit with your other advertising and marketing efforts. The common term for this is FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media

Monday, December 09, 2013

FUFISM INFORMATION FLOW PATTERNS

FUFISM is a marketing philosophy where the social media forms the core element in your marketing strategies and is integrated into your total marketing plan as the main communication platform which is dictated by company policy.

#FUFISM is an acronym for Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media, and is a very far reaching marketing strategy which includes all the different aspects of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and is extremely target market focused. A FUFISM based marketing campaign originates with the management deciding on a product / service or idea that they want marketed, then giving the marketing team a directive to develop a strategy that would achieve the purpose, aims and objectives within the company's marketing policy framework.

The marketing team will then establish a target market audience and generate some content around the product / service or idea that the management has instructed them to market, which is target market specific. Once they have the content and have established a content marketing strategy, the marketing team would start by establishing a web page or group of web pages where the target market focused call to action statement and the conversion funnel end point are accommodated.

Next step is to write one or more blog posts marketing the web pages in question, which is followed up by using the social media to market both the blog posts associated with the web pages as well as the web pages themselves. This is then backed up with the necessary social media links and social media platform specific logos being added to both the web pages and the associated blog posts.

You would now have a three pronged marketing strategy with

a web page or group of web pages as the base

A blog that backs up the web page / pages and interacts with your social media platforms.

One our more social media platforms that promote and interact with both the blog and associated web pages in ways that the intended target market can reach out to your staff and communicating directly with the appropriate employees in your organisation through online based forms in your website, on your blog or through the aspects of the social media platform that you have used.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

To understand the issues connected to LOCAL SEO we need to put a few things into perspective.

What is SEO is the first thing, and believe you me, this is a very big issue as many people have the wrong impression of SEO. Quotes from our pages discussing SEO follow to help you understand the issue.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation should be defined as the collective effort of your entire marketing team in their efforts to ensure that your online information is found by your intended target market when they search for your information, products or services online.

a different explanation of what is SEO

SEO or Search engine optimisation is the collective online effort of your entire marketing team to ensure that your pages are indexed in search engines in a manner that ensures that you get qualified visitors who are looking for your products, services or related information.

So SEO is thus not just the sneaky coded stuff that the technical guys add to your page, but includes, though is not limited to

In page SEO through a variety of coding techniques within the HTML.as well as context applicable content that is target market orientated and well written by a good copy writer.

SMO (Social Media Optimisation) where the social signals and related links to your online information is worked on to maximize the SEOVI that are associated with social media

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) where search engine results pages or SERP's are the primary concern, and your online content is focused for search engines and not the end users of your content

SMM (Social Media Marketing) similar to SMO but focused on your social networks and not their social interactions with your content.

Content marketing where the content appreciation by your target market is the focal area and not the search engines or social media platforms.

Link building and related tactics to generate inbound links

Managers need to understand that SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a very big issue and it needs to be integrated into the company marketing policy and managed from the top in a co-ordinated and integrated fashion. SEO is no longer the stand alone department that it used to be, but should now be an integral part of any online marketing strategy.
There have been many statements saying that SEO is dead, but these are just smoke screens to get you to follow some new approach to SEO in disguised and minimized format.

So what is GEO LOCATION, #geolocation and #geolocationmarketing

First thing we need to establish about local SEO is that it is GEO based and thus has a local Geographically exclusive targeted audience. GEO based means that it is based on Geographical co-ordinates which are based on latitude and longitude readings, as in map reading, with a two figure reading reflecting the exact geographical location of your brick and mortar shop, office, restaurant or business premisses by latitude and longitude

So for local SEO to be implemented the first steps are to establish some means for Google and other search engines to know the GEO Based information about your Brick and mortar location or physical location as in street address. This is best done by having a Google Local page where your business is indicated by a pin, or other marker, that you place on the map yourself, and backed up by doing similar on BING and Yahoo's platforms, as well as any other that you deem necessary.

You also need to ensure that you are consistent with your NAP info... (Name Address Phone = NAP) across all platforms and in all online marketing strategies. This is vitally important especially since Google Humming Bird has flown into the picture where the semantics of all your online efforts are examined and utalised to determine your semantic mapping issues and related SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators)

Google now places great emphasis on your GEO LOCATION for the context of an end users search, and if searching for a restaurant will return the closest listed restaurants in the SERP's, using your geo location, because of the semantic associations of your content to the context of the search. see this INFOGRAPHIC for a better understanding

Geo Location Based Marketing ( #geolocationmarketing ) is thus marketing that takes your latitude and longitude into account, and focuses primarily on local SEO marketing tactics. This is also very useful when people search for things near known landmarks and such as schools, hospitals, hotels and tourism based attractions which might be near your business. an example for a search of this nature this might be "closest restaurant to sunrise point" or "nearest petrol station to M 25 East and M 22 North intersection"

Next issue to consider is what all is taken into consideration when a user performs an online search.

With Google's semantic search, as associated with the Google Humming Bird Algorithm your current GEO LOCATION as determined by a variety of factors is one of the prime SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that are used. If you are using a mobile device when you perform a search then Google looks at a variety of additional issues, such as are you walling in a shopping mall or traveling between locations, and if so in which direction, and what mode of transport you are using. This is done through following your trail by means of triangulation stats as supplied by your cell phone service provider or WiFi service provider, which Google can overlay on bus routes, train routes and major highways.

The time of day, and an end users previous search patterns are also included in this assessment of the semantic context of any search query.

It is thus important that you have taken the time to consider the many issues connected to local search, and done the necessary research about you location and surrounding areas to be able to make use of local vocabulary, local land marks and local businesses so that you may include these in your online content in ways that will make meaningful contributions to your local SEO efforts, which will then be better matched to a local search query for your business, organisation or the products and services that you offer.

Local landmarks of any significance should be mentioned and any connections that these may have to your business should be exploited in your copy, in such a manner that search engines will be able to connect these to your business in the correct context. An example here would be if your business is within the hospitality arena you would discuss any historical landmarks from a tourism perspective, and how your business caters for visitors to the area, as well as how far you are from the specific land mark. Things like parking and access to your business are also of extreme importance here. If you business is in a shopping mall, then you should discuss the mall as a general attraction and mention other shops as well as related businesses within the mall by name within your content in ways that a search engine would be able to connect these businesses to your physical location as well. The new semantic search criteria are at stake here, and the connection between your business and the rest of the businesses within the mall as being part of a shopping complex is the issue that you need to have enforced through your content and related social media marketing strategies.

During your local SEO efforts you should try to mention your street name, your suburb name, your district name, your local municipality name, your post code (ZIP CODE), your phone number and area dialing codes, the closest railway station, local bus terminal names and any other local names that are used by your intended target market in their day to day conversations that may refer to your area or your specific location.

Local SEO is an awful lot easier in small towns than it is in the city, as there are many fewer competing businesses for the same street name, the same suburb name, the same town name and similar names, but this dies not mean that those in small towns should skimp here, but rather that they will do better if all the issues are addressed as completely as possible.

Local SEO favors small business over big brands, and is the small guys window to display their stuff near the top of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) purely because big brands do not have a local presence of any significance. This means that small business has an added advantage if they make use of the LOCAL issue in a manner that Google can interpret and attach local contextual meaning to their content.

Now from reading the above you will realise the true power of the local search issue when you take into consideration that Google uses the exact GPS (Global Positioning System) location of the searcher, and has means of determining the physical distance in meters between the searcher and your brick and mortar location which you have so meticulously crafted and entered into all those sneaky locations on Google Local and other online forums.

Local SEO is thus a very powerful sub set of your total SEO package that you should not ignore, but rather enhance through a FUFISM based approach to your online marketing strategy.

FUFISM is a marketing philosophy where the social media forms the core functional element of the communication factors involved in online marketing and is used to integrate all the different marketing strategies into one coherent and integrated project where each marketing campaign may be worked on in isolation, but remains connected to the whole through its links to the social media as well as the publisher and the author or authors of the various online components of each campaign

Pages used for research during this post... in no particular order. Each of these links is a post in its own rights and will add value to your understanding of LOCAL SEO.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Hash tags are very sneaky and devious symbols that add tremendous value to your online marketing within the social media sphere. Hashtags (#) have been around for an awful long time, but have only been added to the social media marketing arena quite recently. A list of pages that were accessed during research for this post and associated #hashtagmarketing concepts is appended at the end of the post. These pages are not in any order and should each be accessed by you, as each one of these linked pages will add to your understanding of hash tags and the power that the #hashtag adds to your marketing arsenal.

For us to explain the powerful relationship between #FUFISM and #hashtagmarketing , as far as SEO, SMO, general marketing, online marketing and social media marketing in particular are concerned, we will need to briefly out line each of these topics and a few other related issues, then we will discuss how they are interconnected, and show you what we at Info4u consider to be best practice for effective #HASGTAGMARKETING or marketing using the # (hash tag) as a campaign search engine optimization tool that will carry campaign specific Search Engine Optimization Value Indicators.

Start quoe <<--FUFISM is a marketing philosophy where the social media forms the core functional element of the communication factors involved in online marketing and is used to integrate all the different marketing strategies into one coherent and integrated project where each marketing campaign may be worked on in isolation, but remains connected to the whole through its links to the social media as well as the publisher and the author or authors of the various online components of each campaign. -->> end quote

2) SEO

Search engine optimisation is mostly a misunderstood concept, with many thinking that SEO is purely the technical in page sneaky coded stuff that helps add SEOVI to your page, this is how ever a very big error in judgement, as Search Engine Optimisation is an extremely wide collection of various fields, where many different disciplines need to co-operate in a co-ordinated manner and I suggest the you read more about SEO here below is a quote from the page linked.

Start quote <<-- SEO or Search Engine Optimisation should be defined as the
collective effort of your entire marketing team in their efforts to
ensure that your online information is found by your intended target
market when they search for your information, products or services
online. -->> end quote

3) SEOVI

SEOVI or Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators is a term that I have started to use extensively to help me explain the term FUFISM. SEOVI are basically the different variables that a search engine would use in their algorithms to determine a relevant SERP that would supply the most likely answer to an end users query. SEOVI are the online marketing issues and specific tags within the HTML 5 set of tags, that are evaluated and assessed by your marketing team that would add some value for a search engine to your online work.

Social signals and related social media issues are also included as SEOVI and this is an awful lot more important, since the introduction of Google Humming Bird Algorithm, with Google's new approach to SEO, where semantics and the linguistics associated with semantics are now the primary issue to determine SERP's

SMO or Social Media Optimisation is a new concept which forms part and parcel of SEO or Search Engine Optimization, but is focused exclusively on the use of social media and the associated social signals that would be generated through the different posts on different social media platforms and their collective interaction with the target page where your campaign specific call to action would reside.

The best person to follow on Google plus for SMO is +Joshua Berg as Joshua takes these matter rather seriously and blogs about SMO extensively.

5) SMM

SMM or Social Media Marketing is the core function of SMO where the social media is used as the basis for online marketing to a specified niche market within a specific social media platform.

Social Media Marketing is basically a sub set of SMO (Social Media Optimisation) within the bigger picture of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) . SMO is getting quite a bit of attention since the introduction of the Google Humming Bird algorithm, but one does need to remember that SMM is just an off shoot of SMO and is in reality just one of the many components of SEO that you need to master in order to get the best value out of the organic SERP's in all search engines.

6) CM

CM or Content Marketing is a core component of SEO that needs some serious attention. many will tell you that content is king and this is something that you do need to evaluate with great care. The introduction of Google Humming bird makes this statement even more relevant, as the more content that you have online, the easier it is for Google to make better semantic correlations with your content and a search query.

Content Marketing is all about your content, and the content management plan that you have in place to manipulate your content through the use of data base management strategies, that display your content in a variety of different formats for different target market groups and different product lines within your various online resources, with the intent on ensuring that your intended target market enjoys your content and has a pleasant experience consuming your online content and engaging with you online.

7) SEM

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is a subset of SEO where the total focus is on the impacts of your SEO on the organic traffic in specific search engines. SEM does not consider the human element of things, and is thus (in our opinion at Info4u) a rather short sighted approach which should be properly evaluated then used sparingly.

SEM excludes semantics and focuses on KEY WORDs to the exclusion of most other SEO related issues.

There are how ever many people who will try to convince you differently, and it is your choice if you allow them to fool you or not. One must just consider the explanation of SEO as above, then think about how Search Engine Marketing fits into this picture to have a clear understanding of the real value of SEM

8) SERP
SERP's or Search Engine Results pages are a search engines answer to a users query, and contain a list of links which the search engine believes is the most likely set of links that would contain the most relevant answer to the end users query. SERP's usually refer to the organic result, but are also supplied in various other formats where ever a user searches online for an answer. Many of the social media platforms have their own in-house search which supplies SERP's drawn exclusively from within their walled gardens.

One must remember that there are only three different ways an end user may find your information.

1) luck or serendipity
2) due to some form of advertising such as

word of mouth or personal recomendation

radio advert

TV advert

print media advert (newspaper / flyer / bill board etc)

PPC (paid per click) advertising and add-words marketing

directory listing or other online advertising

3) by using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine.

Search engines use #SEOVI or Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators to asses the search values of a web page by processing these variables through a series of algorithms and then comparing the results to an end users query. This process starts long before a search is initiated by a search query, and in reality begins when a page is first crawled and indexed by a search engine of some type. The search engines send out what are commonly called spider bots which scour the internet looking for all online content by following links already in their databases, and indexing the content of every online resource that they can detect, and have permission to access.

Search engines perform many small tasks evaluating this information and store the results within a variety of different areas of their very large databases for later use in other search algorithms. This information then remains idle and awaits the final search algorithm which uses the information in the various databases where the many precursory algorithms have prepared your pages information and compares this to the end users search query using a host of short search algorithms and returns an answer in fractions of a second.

A SERP is thus a very complex issue that takes an awful lot of information into consideration and the #hashtag if present is just one of very many issues that a search engine has considered before passing you what it believes is the best possible solution to your query.

9) The Hashtag explained

The hashtag is a simple thing to implement, as it is done by preceding any typed word with the hash symbol. (#) The hash symbol is found on a standard QWERTY KEY BOARD as the "captial' of the number 3 on the upper row of numerals, or by holding down the shift key and pressing the "3" key

Note that some key boards in Europe and other parts of the world may be confusing as they have replaced the "shift 3" with other meanings, and the apple mac also has other issues see links below for more on this

Using the #hashtag with any word adds special meaning to that word, and helps any search engine add special value to your niche search by including only values that contain this very exclusive SEOVI. (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) in the SERP's for your hashtag.

So how does this tie in with your FUFISM based marketing and the (#) hashtag?

First thing you need to remember is that you need to take your time and establish a unique hash tag that will suit your marketing needs by evaluating your intended target market and understanding how this group will relate to your selected hashtag. This selected hashtag needs to be unique and must some how be connected to your brand, your product or your event that you will be marketing. see http://bit.ly/hashtag-power This hashtag must be short, sweet on the tong, easy on the eyes, soft on the typing fingers and relevant to YOUR SPECIFIC marketing campaign.

The real power is in the #FUFISM factors and how you envisage that you will integrate your selected hashtag with all the pieces of this specific marketing campaign into your overall marketing plan. You will need a well structured marketing campaign that is time specific, and focuses on all your social media platforms with a view of social interaction with your intended target market segments.

You will need to consider the following areas amongst many others which you will recognize as your plan progresses.

content marketing

Social media marketing

search engine marketing

Social media optimisation

Search engine optimsation

off line marketing strategies such as

radio and Television

news papers and magazines

pamphlets and flyers

billboards and posters

target market identification and selection criteria

market research target market preferences

your marketing team structure and management style

Free flow of social media comments and company interactions

the ability of your marketing team to act fast and push the conversations in any specific direction without being overtly intrusive or abusive.

the preparedness of your entire company to become involved and supply the customers needs at large scale in short time spans should your campaign go viral.

So where do you start?

step 1 <=> define your purpose, aims and objectives of your current total marketing plan showing where the company objectives are being fulfilled, and have a written report on these issues.

step 2 <=> define the product, service or other information that you envisage marketing in your new campaign, showing how and where this fits in with your current marketing strategies, and make any necessary adjustments to your marketing strategies and policies that may be needed.

step 3<=> start building your plan for this specific marketing campaign by doing some serious market research and difine the following aspects in seperate reports

product / service / information definitions and associated literature

geographic location based data of targeted areas where your campaign should reach

break down of different target market groups as supplied by your marketing team

staff available with specific social media platform capabilities

face book

twitter

YouTube

google plus

Pinterest

tumbler

all others

blogging team

web design team

SEO consultants or inhouse specialists

marketing team with speciality areas listed : examples listed below

radio and TV

News papers and magazines

flyers, pamphlets and billboards

telephone marketing

cold calling reps

instore / in house branding

product branding / marketing

purpose of campaing

aims and objectives

other areas that come to mind for your specific industry

Now that you have a target market, a product / service decide on a campaign theme

Next brain storm with all involved in doing this preliminary research to determine a single hashtag that would suit your needs and then check for availability. If needed change the hashtag focus to be campaign specific. Remember that this hashtag should be used in general conversation, so choose wisely and do not be silly about the choice of hashtag.special note : research your chosen hashtag and evaluate what is there before proceeding. You may get some very strange and negative issues if your choose badly.

before using this hashtag anywhere discuss this issue verbally with your main management and get their approval in writing (make sure they do not use this hashtag early, because this indiscretion could cause failure of your campaign) Once you have this approval get your team together and discuss the timeline for your campaign and work out the finer details of how you expect your target market to react and where your call to action statements will be marketed, as well as how these will be handled by your team once your intended target market starts to respond. Have a back up plot in place to handle all those who fall outside of your intended target market who get all caught up in the hype and have a way to move them out of the conversion funnel in a happy way, do not just use a filter and discard their interactions, but rather find a way to apologize for misleading them and show them other related areas of your business where they may have an interest, as they have shown an interest in your campaign, and proof of that is that they are now an in your face problem which needs delicate handling.

Put your landing pages with your final stages of the conversion funnel in place first, once these are functional, work backwards through the conversion funnel and when there are enough steps in place start the offline marketing camapaign and go at it full speed.

Follow up with serious social media posts with links to the landing pages of different stages of your conversion funnel, and ensure that each post within the social media contains at least one iteration of your campaign specific hashtag. Try to use this hashtag in the general conversation within the social media when ever possible.

Remember that this hashtag has by now been marketed in many places, such as news papers, magazines, flyers, pamphlets, Radio and other trans media outlets.

If you have done the FUFISM thing correctly then your administration staff, your sales staff, production staff, your public relations staff and all others will be prepared and waiting, just in-case your campaign goes viral.

once again just to remind you we will expalin the term FUFISM

FUFISM is a marketing philosophy where the social
media forms the core functional element of the communication factors
involved in online marketing and is used to integrate all the different
marketing strategies into one coherent and integrated project where
each marketing campaign may be worked on in isolation, but remains
connected to the whole through its links to the social media as well as
the publisher and the author or authors of the various online
components of each campaign

Now you need to remember that each social media platform works in conjunction with all other social media platforms, but is a separate mini campaign within this specific marketing project. Each separate social Media platform needs to be integrated into the main campaign through an integrated approach and as such you will need a campaign specific manager who will manage the integration by running a database that lists each social media post with a reference number so that cross referancing things becomes a simple task, where every post is available to all team members across all platforms.

The reason for this is multi purpose and includes :

so that images may be pinned in pinterest and then referanced in

facebook

twitter

Google Plus

your blog

your web site

other online resources

So that posts in Facebook may be referenced in

twitter

Google plus

your blog

your webiste

so that posts in Google Plus may be referenced in

facebook

twitter

your blog

your web site

You get the point here, all your social media platforms must cross referance all the others in natural ways and expand on the topic as is discussed in those posts, but keep in focus your conversion funnel which must be the primary objective of all your social media conversations.

Each post should try to get the viewer or end user of your information one step closer to the final stage of your conversion funnel. This means that your conversion funnel must be well documented and distributed to all participants so that each person working on your specific hashtag campaign knows who your intended target market is, and who is not to be taken through the conversion process, but gently lead off to other areas of your total marketing campaign where they may fall into other target market zones.

Marketing using the hashtag (#) is quite a simple task, but involves an awful lot of planning and a tremendous amount of team work. You should never just add a hashtag without going through the research motions first, as there can be some quite nasty surprises down the line when others jump on the band wagon and start to use your tag in strange ways which have a negative impact on your brand, your company or your event.

Always take your time and put a well thought through plan of action into place when using a new hashtag, as things happen and your hashtag campaign could by chance just suddenly go viral, and you will need to be prepared for this, especially when there is a negative connotation attached to your hashtag by the public.

hope this helps you with your online marketing and the correct use of the hashtag.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

Google humming bird algorithm came about due to the many devious and sneaky issues associated with semantic search, and Google's continued efforts to ensure that semantics are included in their efforts to supply us as end users of most information with the best possible SERP's for each SQ that we perform

Some acronyms that I use in my posts explained for easy reading

Semantics is playing an increasingly important role in many parts of our society both online and offline. The many different languages spoken in the global village and the issues associated with translation can only be addressed through the application of semantics, as idioms and associated meanings get completely lost during translation from one language to another when words alone are translated.

This issue is of extreme importance when translating any language into machine driven responses where automated responses are issued, like supplying a SERP to an SQ and this has not slipped past Google's engineers without any complaints and an awful lot of casual conversation around the many jokes that have been circulated on the internet, alluding to misinterpretation of the translation associated with idioms.

I live in sunny South Africa, where we have (only) 11 official languages, and a host of dialects as well as many widely spoken languages which are not officially recognised, and we have many localized jokes about the misinterpretation of spoken or even written words, some of which cause great anguish and many harsh words at public meetings where there are a diverse range of people with many different opinions on what should be done and why. I am talking here about town planing meetings at the local municipality level, where decisions on local issues are made, and the local meaning of many words does not exactly match the official government versions, causing upstream complaints and even blatant hostility from those at higher levels where a different version of things is presented due to the missing semantics of the translated meeting notes, and the fact that these officials have no proficiency in the language used at the meetings where decisions were made.

The issues of semantics are not new to Google, and the engineers at Google have been working on these issues for many years, in many different parts of the world on a rather large scale, but most people have ignored the issues and been rather happy doing so. The lessons that Google has learned in human speech semantics have been well researched and Google has managed to adopt many of these issues into the semantics associated with digital images, videos and the many audio visual presentations online.

The recent update in Google images, where image search has now got the added advantage of semantics being associated with images in new and novel ways is a great step for google. These changes within image search are of extreme importance to the #Googlehummingbirdalgorithm (humming bird) as they now reflect many keywords, and meta data which will be directly associated with, and then linked to an image. This introduction of semantics to images allows us to search images by key words and specific items associated with the image content which we can identify within the image.

So how does all this relate back to FUFISM and the HUMMING BIRD ALGORITHM

FUFISM is a marketing philosophy where the social media forms the core functional element of the communication factors involved in online marketing and is used to integrate all the different marketing strategies into one coherent and integrated project where each marketing campaign may be worked on in isolation, but remains connected to the whole through its links to the social media as well as the publisher and the author or authors of the various online components of each campaign.

All online marketing has the same issues with the core issue being how to ensure that your online information is displayed on the screens of your intended target market group, so that these persons may be enticed to perform your pre-determined call to action by following the onscreen prompts. (some times marketers hide these in plain sight by using very sneaky semantics and insinuations)

Google's humming bird algorithm looks at the content of your search query with new eyes, and has a much deeper understanding of the context of your query, as it is capable of understanding some of the semantics associated with the in-page information, and has the ability to compare these semantics to the semantics of other online resources, such as blogs, web sites and social media posts.

Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines all have systems and strategies in place to gather as much information about you as an individual as they can, and they use this information along with the semantics of your search query to try and understand exactly what it is you are looking for. They input all this information in to their search algorithms and the result is a SERP (Search engine results page), which contains a list of pages where they feel that you would most likely find the information that you are looking for.

If you have applied a FUFISM based marketing strategy then your Authorship markup, publisher Markup and social media activities as well as blog posts and web site content marketing will be aligned and reflect a common semantic element that is threaded through your work which would link them all together in Google's eyes

When put together here in this short article it sounds so simple, but it is in reality a very difficult task to achieve as there are so many misunderstandings of the interpretations of the work that an SEO consultant or practitioner does, with the primary reason being that people do not realise that Search engine Optimisation is the collective efforts of your entire workforce to ensure that your intended target market finds your online information when using a search engine of any nature, and that these persons then follow your intended call to action statement.

Friday, October 18, 2013

The advent of the social media revolution has impacted on many company's communication systems, but few have actually taken time to write new communication policies that accommodate these changes, and even fewer have adapted their marketing policies to include the drastic changes in the online marketing arena.

This leaves the marketing professionals stuck between a rock and a very hard place, with the weight of ROI (Return ON Investments) squeezing in on both sides. There are no mechanisms for those lower down the ladder to complain
that the marketing management is not doing their jobs properly, or that the main
company management is operating and enforcing out dated communication
policies that do not accommodate the new systems which have evolved
with the social media revolution.

FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media policies can start the ball rolling down the hill of incompetency, then ask the management to inspect the damage. This will force management to take some action to rectify the situation.

You are obviously asking how, so an explanation and an example is needed.

The first steps are to get everybody at marketing meetings where FUFISM, SEO, Social media and marketing are discussed.

The main topics on the agenda should be

what is online content

what is content marketing

what is Search Engine Optimisation

what is Social media

what is Social Media Optimisation

what is FUFISM

what is the relationship between

content marketing

social media optimisation

search engine optimisation

FUFISM

This meeting will give the junior marketing staff as well as IT staff, web site development team, blogging team and public relations team an opportunity to explain a wide variety of issues including but not limited to

SERP's (Search engine Results pages) and how the social media is included in many search engine results pages, with many posts within the social media being much higher up in the SERP's for many of the key words and key word phrases than the company's web pages

how the Social media may be used to promote the company web site, the company blog and other online company information in various different platforms.

how face book business pages can be manipulated higher into the SERP's by allowing company employees to use Face book.

how Google Plus business pages can be promoted higher into the SERP's by allowing company employees to use G+ as a social platform.

Other benefits of using G+ as a social layer internally within the company

the company's communication policies, especially the impacts of these policies on the company's marketing efforts

Information sharing, focusing on the SERP's and the coloration between social media promotions and changes in visitor statistics including where these web site visitors came from.

the impact of high levels of social signals on organic SERP's for your web site and blog.

This meeting will get many mangers hot under the collar, and many SEO specialists will be in for a tough time, being stuck in the middle with no answers. The answers need to come from top management, who are actually in the dark about these issues, because they have not been informed of the impacts of the social media on all communication strategies, at all levels. Some serious forethought needs to be put into the agenda, and everybody needs to be given an opportunity to express their views on FUFISM and how putting a FUFISM policy in place will impact on their input to the total marketing plan.

The changes in general community communication patterns as a result of the social media revolution also need to be brought to the attention of top management in a non combative way, explaining why management needs to take note of these changes and how the company can benefit from adopting a user friendly approach to social media, which encourages all company employees to make use of the social media within the work place.

In South Africa where I live, work and play, most company mangers see the social media as a problem which takes up productive time, and so many companies have policies which prohibit the use of social media within the work place. Many South African companies have gone so far as to block / ban all social media sites within their internal online networks through the use of firewall technologies and routing tables. This puts the marketing of online materials in a rather awkward position, as top management is not up to speed with the changes in the communication styles and methods that have been necessitated by the advent of social media.

Top management have also not been briefed about the changes in Search Engine Optimisation strategies which have been forced upon the marketing industry as a result of the influences of the social media on most search engine algorithms, and because of this lack of knowledge, those involved at top management level have been making many poor decisions about their communications strategies. This meeting that we recommend, will give the management a heads up to their short falls, and allow them to be brought up to date.

In recent months the issues around guest blogging have changed considerably, and the advent of the #hummingbirdupdate have made these issues more important to get right.

So lets just explain the Humming bird issue a bit, then you will have a better insight into what I am trying to say. Open this infographic in a seperate window / browser and go over it briefly.

Note in the sections labeled SOLUTIONS and PRESUMPTIONS the issue of quality and keywords are mentioned and this is of extreme importance, as you want your guest blogger to supply high quality, unique content that is written specifically for your site if you are the site owner.

On the other hand this implies by default that if you are going to be guest blogging for somebody else, your content should be written with the host sites audience in mind, and that you should not be regurgitating stuff that you have plastered all over the web in as many places as you can get your words to be displayed.

These issues are also very relevant to your authorship value and add a great deal of high quality SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to all your related work. The new Humming bird algorithm looks at the author quality and examines other posts and articles that have been written by the same author and looks for rehashed work, or duplicate posts in many different locations. The big G machine has ways and means of detecting these things, and evaluates your work accordingly. If you write the same old stuff again and again in different platforms Google will begin to see you as a spammer, and if you are not careful your work will begin to be devalued in many different ways, as you will acquire the negative points that go along with spamming. These negative points may not be very significant at first, but as they slowly begin to accumulate, and the pattern of regurgitating the same work over and over again emerges in multiple cases you will soon find your work dropping out of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and you will be scratching your pip and saying to your self "what do I need to do to rank better"

The solution is simple, but you will not get it because you will not be thinking of yourself as a "SPAMMER" Always consider where else you have written an article on the same subject and try to quote that article in your work instead of rehashing the work. When guest blogging this can be difficult, but the new humming bird algorithm is the issue to consider, as humming bird likes these kinds of referrals, and uses them to build your author value and add the necessary SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to a variety of areas including for the publisher (rel = publisher) the author (rel = author) and the content meaning identification factors. So if you are a blog owner and have others posting guest articles consider these factors, and if you are guest blogging for others write them a short email discussing this and asking for the blog owners opinion.

This request for clarity on cross linking and related issues will put you as a guest blogger in a different light with the publisher where your post will be published as a guest post. Some may at first find this offensive as it is counter to the past rules of guest blogging where the blog owner did not want you to link out all over the place as this would perhaps lead the reader astray. But the SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) associated with this behavior may well be worth it as the impact on the SERP's (Search Engine Optimisation Pages) will be significant.

Like I said in the first line of this post... this is a lot bigger than you think.

With Humming bird in the picture guest blogging is an awful lot more important than it ever was, and the quality of the work is so much more important for your author value. The SEOVI associated with guest blogging is tremendous, and so is the associated punishment of negative values when you do sloppy work and rehash what you have already written else where.

Guest blogging has just got so much more complicated and we need to get to grips with the true impacts of the humming bird algorithm. As Google gathers more data and more people realise the value of the HTML 5 meta tags of rel = me, rel = author and rel = publisher these things will become clearer and those who take the time to use them will be well rewarded, as those who abuse them will be punished.

My personal opinion is that you had better ensure that you have done the G+ author thing and get to grips with understanding the many issues around G+ pages and publisher rights as viewed by Google. those who do not do this will soon be slipping up on their marketing when their SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) start to be less impressive than they would like.

Saturday, July 06, 2013

Comments in the social media have an awful lot more influence than most marketers realise, and so you should think about developing a
social media strategy which includes a section on commenting within the
social media, and how this should be handled by your marketing team as a
whole.

The art of commenting is a very important part of FUFISM or functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media that really needs attention from your marketing management structures and Search Engine Consultants. Search engines are increasingly using so called social signals in their algorithms to evaluate the aboutness of social media posts, web sites, blogs and other online content.

A single post with a single link to a web page / blog post or other online content in any social media profile that receives a large volume of social signals can put that specific online content right at the top of the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) in a very short time frame. Marketing people thus need to understand the concept of social signals, and then work out how best they can generate large volumes of search engine friendly social signals for specific posts, and how to mange these issues in a sustainable manner, to keep their content as close to the top of the SERP's as they can.

The grip that the social media has on our SERP's (Search Engine Results pages) is not permanent, but wanes drastically over a relatively short time period, then settles down as the age factor becomes less influential, and so fresh comments and follow-up replies that induce conversation around the topic are essential in keeping fresh social signals to your post. How to achieve this is not discussed in many places, but Guy's post helps put the spotlight on this rather difficult topic in a very interesting way. Guy Kawasaki does not go into to much detail, from an SEO perspective but does give the basics as well as some essential etiquette tips.

This post by +Guy Kawasaki is a must read post for all social media optimisation and search engine optimisation practitioners.

Guy's post does not discuss the FUFISM aspect nor the SEO or SMO aspects of commenting, so we will fill you in here and supply a few extra pointers that you may consider when using any social media platform as a marketing tool. Please note that our preferred social media platform is G+

FUFISM = Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media

SEO = Search engine Optimisation

SMO = Social Media Optimization

You do need to remember that this is a business approach to using the social media as a marketing tool, so the many aspects of marketing need to be on the table and available for quick reference when commenting on a post that your co-worker made, or relying to a comment made on your post, or keeping tabs on a post you have been assigned to monitor.

When dealing with all online marketing, once the product description is finalized the next step is to define the target market. This target market definition is a very important part of

the Key word Selection process

the copy writing process

the IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) process

the OPSEO (Off Page Search Engine Optimisation) process

the SMO (Social Media Optimisation) process

the Content marketing process

many other diverse online marketing aspects which have indirect influence on your SERP's

These process need to be tweaked and manipulated carefully as you create the original copy of your post, and captured into your system so that this is available to your social media team when they start promoting the post through other social media platforms as well as in you web site and your blog. Your web site may not hold the capability of keeping track on comments or have a commenting system in place, but your blog will and so will your social media pages, which include both personal profile pages and business or product pages.
The primary thing to keep in mind here is that all the social signals generated by a post are recorded and stored within the search engines database, and connected to many different areas where there will be some SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) that will be processed. These include but are not limited to

the author of the post

the content of the post (key words and topic as well as aboutness)

links within the post to

previous post

other social media profiles

Google maps

Google local

your blogs or others blogs

your web sites or other web pages

online forums or groups

images with in the post (remember to add XML info to your image)

The total length of the post (very important that post exceeds 250 characters)

comments

who commented with their details

replies with who replied and the content of the reply

the time differences between posting and comments as well as replies

the aboutness of each comment or reply as well as

the aboutness of

linked pages

posts

profiles

Quality of comments and replies as related directly to the original post as well as to previous comments on the post and include links within the comments.

So there are an awful lot of things to consider when replying to a comment on your post when you evaluate the Search Engine Optimisation value and the Social Media Optimization
of your reply or comment.

Bed sure to have target market description and related product / service info on hand.

try to stay on topic

try to stimulate further dialog and generate a conversation

try to use relevant marketing approved key words as per target market instructions.

have a plan in place before you make a post!!!!! for future reference

always write at least one full sentence in you comment

remember to tag the author or commenter who you are attempting to lure into a conversation by plussing them personally in your reply or comment.

Commenting with the intent on generating a conversation is not as easy as it sounds, and requires considerable skill and knowledge of the topic, product, service and related issues. This means that the person who is handling your Social Media Optimisation (SMO) needs to be well informed as well as well read on your product, service and company related issues.

This job is essential to get good SERP's and should not be left to a junior marketer, but rather to a qualified member of your sales team or public relations team or be a dedicated social media optimisation specialists. This person should also attend your regular marketing meetings and be aware of the FUFISM principles, as well as have the authority to get others within your marketing infrastructure involved in the ongoing conversation building strategies which are essential to your social signal development.

Comments have immense value as social signal generating tools, and the more comments with responses from the original poster and others linked to him / her through shared profile pages, and pages that have them listed as contributors to the same web site, blog or post that the search engines picks up, the higher your information will appear in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages ).

Comments in the social media thus have an awful lot more influence than most marketers realise, and so you should think about developing a social media strategy which includes a section on commenting within the social media, and how this should be handled by your marketing team as a whole.

Thursday, June 06, 2013

I am often asked where content marketing fits into the FUFISM picture and how is content marketing related to FUFISM. This question is asked so often that I felt the need to write a post covering this, but when I started to put pen to paper I realized that there were some basic explanations that needed to be defined in the correct context, because the SEOI (Search Engine Optimisation Industry) has been attacked in many strange ways and the statement that SEO is DEAD has been bandied around so often that many people believe this to be true.

Firstly we need to start with the newest term and explain what is FUFISM, then we need to ensure that you understand the meaning of a few other terms, and that there is no confusion around the meaning of terms that the online marketing world has redfined for their personal consumption to enhance the so called death of SEO, which is a blatant lie and used to market their own personal interests.

The advent of the social media with sites like FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, PINTEREST and GOOGLE PLUS have changed the way that people communicate in their social environment, and this change has flowed out of the social realm into the workplace, affecting business communications in many strange and mysterious ways.

It has thus become imperative that business understand this very serious change and take the necessary steps to ensure that their business communications methods are adapted, allowing business to find ways to make use of these changes in their communications policies, and that the use of social media as a communication medium, with its wide variety of different tools is integrated into business communication structures in a more professional, user friendly manner so that both internal communications and communications with the public at large are easily established and well managed from a company public relations perspective.

Business must thus integrate the social media into all their communication strategies, especially their marketing strategies with the primary focus on connecting with their target market groups for the purposes of marketing, advertising and public relations management issues.

FUFISM is also a philosophy where many things are shared, focusing on the marketing arena and the Search Engine Optimisation strategies that are used to ensure that a company's online content is located by the intended target market, then tracking the impacts of the various social media marketing strategies, and ensuring that every person within the company's marketing structures understands their role that they fulfill, as well as the results that their individual efforts have achieved.

One of the primary pillars of the FUFISM philosophy is that each person within the company marketing team understands the complexity of the SEOI (Search Engine Optimisation Industry) and has the tools to visualize each separate component's influence on their own field of expertise, and have some influence on the reporting structure to show others in the marketing team what their own efforts are, with a focus on how their personal efforts may influence the many other sectors in either a positive or negative manner, so that the necessary actions may be implemented to counter any negative impact or capitalize on any positive influence.

FUFISM dictates that each person who is in control of, or manages any
online content should attend regular public relations meetings, as well
as marketing meetings where the effectiveness of each online
environment is discussed, along with the methods and tools used to
ensure that the online information made available in that environment is
compatible with all other online information and integrated into the
company communications plan, as provided for in the directives which
have been issued according to minutes of meetings. This is essential for accountability, which is one of the corner stones of the FUFISM philosophy.

Each
person appointed to perform any duties which entail publication of
online materials of any nature should be held responsible to ensure that
feed back on when (Date and Time) the online publication became
effective, so that this can be used to determine the impacts of this
information on the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) of any related
work which may be referenced or linked to from within the work
published. This is an essential part of FUFISM and should not be taken
lightly, as there could be unforeseen negative impacts on the SERP's if a
search engine decides that this is SPAM and takes action in the form of
a censure of some type.

This logging of publication or
feed back on publication should help identify the specific post or
publication that causes the SERP's to either improve or drop. Without
FUFISM management strategies in place these issues would be very
difficult to isolate and then rectify.

WHAT IS ONLINE CONTENT ?

Online content is all the stuff that your entire company puts online for what ever reason. This includes but is not limited to

your web publications

your blog publications

your social media publications

you online marketing

your online advertising

your online news publications and press releases

your online public relations efforts

The above content and any other online content you may have made available to either the public or your own staff does not happen without a plan of some sort, unless you are playing games and have no clue as to the power of the internet.

Each publication that your company places online should be part of a plan and have

a purpose

a set of aims

some objectives

a time frame

Deciding on what content to place online is a complex task that should involve your public relations and marketing teams working together as a unit to make a company policy frame work, which would dictate who is responsible to research the purpose, aims and objectives of having any online content in place from the beginning, then allocate specific persons to formulate content to satisfy the identified purposes, aims and objectives in a co-operative manner, so as to solicit the best input from your public relations team along with the persons that have been appointed to control and manage the environment in which that online content will be made available to the specific target market group that it was intended to reach.

WHAT IS SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a complex affair and covers every strategy that you have in place to ensure that your intended target markets find and follow your proposed online call to action statements for the sub set of information which you would like that specific target market to experience.

The primary support structure which ensures that Search Engine Optimisation succeeds is target market selection and the subsequent key word research around the information that you would like that specific target market to evaluate and take action on, then ensuring that the specific online page where this information is housed has the necessary IPSEO (In-Page search Engine Optimisation) done by your staff and / or consultants, and that this is then followed up with the necessary OPSEO (Off-Page Search Engine Optimsation) in the social media and through other company approved channels by your staff and / or consultants.

for more on what SEO is see previous posts in our blog at http://4ubrand.blogspot.com

WHAT IS MARKETING?

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling the product or service. Marketing is a critical business function for attracting customers.

Online marketing is thus the online process of communicating with your customers for the purpose of selling your service or product online or through another online avenue.

Now that we have an understanding of the core components listed above we can continue on to discuss CONTENT MARKETING and its place in the FUFISM philosophy. Using the above information content marketing may be loosely described as follows:

Content marketing is the process of communicating the value of your online information (content) to search engines, content aggregators and other online repositories for the purpose of ensuring that your online information is listed or indexed and placed in their databases then found by your intended target market when they search online for your information and displayed in SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

Online content marketing is using relevant and valuable information to attract
potential customers to your online content.Good online content will not only attract, but if done
correctly, will engage your target audience and drive profitable action
to your business. Learn how to implement a content strategy in your
business. see this article for more

Read here to get a few different views on what content marketing is but keep in mind that online content marketing is a subset of Search Engine Optimisation strategies and needs to be treated accordingly. Many other explanations for content marketing ignore the SEO component and treat content marketing as a stand alone issue, which is very bad for your online business efforts.

NOW HOW DOES THIS FIT IN WITH FUFISM?

Once you have an understanding that online content marketing is a subset of Search Engine Optimisation then you can get to grips with the idea that online content marketing must be integrated into your marketing philosophy at an early stage. Content marketing should be integrated into your marketing strategy at the point where you create the content plan and list the purpose, aims and objectives of a specific subject, product or service that you need to bring to the attention of a selected target market through your online content.

Target market selection is a critical component of your content
marketing, as the content should be constructed and formulated with a
call to action statement in a manner that is recognizable and
appreciated as important to your selected target market.

Having great content with an effective call to action statement is the first part of content marketing, the second part, which is putting the In Page SEO component of your content in place, requires careful target market definition with an understanding of the characteristics of this target market , as the third part, off page SEO is defendant of the second part for its strategy.

It is good Good content marketing practice to follow up with some cross media marketing in the traditional media such as RADIO, NEWS PAPER and / or MAGAZINES to put the key words into your target markets minds so they will search online for more info on the the product or service in question.

This is where FUFISM comes into the picture as these things all need to be coordinated and managed to co-inside with the social media marketing of your online content to ensure maximum impact and enforcement of the selected key words across many different platforms that each has a small accumulative impact on your SEO and the accompanying SERP's

Friday, May 31, 2013

What do you think of this new SEO avenue that Google has put on the table?

Some say it is great some say it sucks and some say what ? I don't believe this exists.

In my humble opinion this is a wonderful avenue to add some SEO value to yourself as an author, and it works very well. My image shows up next my search results for a number of terms in a few different websites that I own, as well as for my blogs and some posts that I make in other blogs.

Search for "Frank Gainsford" in Google and see for yourself...

after watching the video please leave a comment for me to evaluate

This adds value to your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and improves your SERP's (Search Engine Results Page) big time. G+ or Google Plus is also a great social media platform that is steadily growing in size and stature, which also adds many different SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicators) to your other online pages in strange ways that elevate them considerably in the SERP's when your reference them in your posts. My preliminary research on my own work shows that once you have established your Authorship credentials this is even more effective.

If you are following my previous posts and have an understanding of FUFISM then you will realise where this fits in with your Functional User Friendly Integrated social Media policies and how this can influence the rest of your marketing, and the impacts are quite impressive.

Please leave a comment discussing your views on Google authorship. I need this for some research. If you want to see the results of this research please say so in your comments.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a very complicated issue with many diverse fields working collectively to ensure that your intended target market locates your online information using a search engine. Each of the many disciplines adds its own set of values to your SEO in subtle ways that most SEO practitioners deem irrelevant and ignore.

The most noticeable culprit here is the KEY WORDS meta tag in the head section, which Google says is not used in determining your PR (Page Rank), and so most SEO practitioners ignore the key words meta tag and its great value to each of your pages and your web site as a whole, especially when determining the aboutness of your work.

Content marketing is a big component of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and should not be viewed as competition to SEO but rather as a supplement to SEO. Images are an essential part of content marketing and the value that images add to the SEO efforts of your work should never be under-estimated. This sounds confusing, but SEO is used in content marketing, and content marketing is a very large component of Search Engine optimization, which is why you need to be careful of separating the two but yet understanding that they are interconnected and part of the same bundle of confusion called marketing.

One of the most important things from an SEO perspective to remember when using images are the XML markup within the image, which your viewers will never even know exists, just as most of those who visit your web pages have no idea that all web pages have a <HEAD> section. Image
title, image description, image related key-words and other image describing elements can, and should be added to the image XML data, and saved in an embedded format as part of your image. You need
to make sure that these embedded XML elements are directly related to your site content
matching your in-page SEO content, especially any META DATA that you may have placed within the <HEAD> section of your page if you have access to it.

Unfortunately the <HEAD> section is not available when using many blogging platforms, and many web design programs also use wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) platforms which exclude access to the <HEAD> section of your pages. What you as an SEO practitioner
need to do, is take some time to evaluate the image that you will be using in the context
of

where this image will reside within your page,

what you are trying to portray
with the image

what the image represents,

what is the purpose of including this image

how this image will impact on your SEO

who your target market is, and how they will react to your image

how this image relates to other in-page SEO issues

You then need to ensure that the
relevant SEO specific set of image related key words, image title, image description
and other relevant image related XML data such as image geo location, image date and all other issues relevant to your image are best suited to your IPSEO (In Page Search Engine Optimisation) and included in the embedded image XML by your graphic design team or image optimisation specialist..
If you use the same base set
of variables within the <HEAD> section of your page and include
the same or similar set of key words in your page as well as the embedded image XML data elements, then your image will get an
awful lot more attention from Google and other search engines. Most web design people
forget about the power of this embedded XML data that is used by image designers
to manage image classification and image description.

Graphic art
designers use these embedded XML data sets that are stored within the image XML data, very differently to web design, or SEO staff
and place XML data that is not relevant to search engine optimisation within the embedded image XML
for graphic design people to use.

As Jenny Maclean says in her article , some sites gain a
considerable amount of their Google traffic through Google Images rather
than the main web search. If you want to rank well in Images, make sure
your image files are aptly named, but you also need to ensure that your image has the right XML data embedded within the image, so that search engines can index and manage the embedded XML Search Engine compatible elements in ways that benefit your total SEO effort.

As always the selection of your target market is important to your SEO tactics. Understanding how your selected target market will react to your image is also essential, and the XML embedded into your image file should take this target market reaction into consideration when choosing the image name as well as the embedded XML data for your image key words, image title and image description.

The embedded XML data that is associated with all images that you will be publishing within your pages should be discussed with

your copy writer,

your Social media team

Your web site design team

your marketing and advertising teams

Your public relations team

your SEO team

others who are identified through the application of your FUFISM policies.

It thus follows that your web design team, your Social media team, your blog team and all others working on any aspect of your online marketing all understand that you need to be working together as a solid, unified team when it to comes to SEO issues. Each member of the team needs to ensure that their knowledge in their specific field is integrated into your marketing strategies through the application of FUFISM (Functional User Friendly integrated Social Media) This integration can only be achieved through closer working relationships between all the role players, with an understanding of what each role player actualy contributes to your marketing, and the methods used to ensure that each role players input is appreciated by the other members of the team.

If you were un-aware of the embedded XML data that can be used in your images, then you need to take some time out and discuss what embedded XML data can actualy be included in your images embedded XML data with your graphic design team or image management staff.

Be pro active and inform the rest of your SEO team of issues that you believe should be included by talking about them at marketing meetings...